It is well known that high speed wind can do great damage to residential and commercial building structures, particularly in areas prone to hurricanes and other high wind storms. Each year hurricanes cause a considerable amount of damage to buildings, resulting in increased insurance rates. For this reason several states have enacted new building codes designed to insure that new structures are resistant to hurricane speed winds. For example the state of Florida recently enacted a new building code which requires all new buildings to comply with standards by the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Southern Building Code.
Numerous systems have been tried for increasing the wind resistance of buildings. U.S. Pat. No. 5,448,861 to Lawson includes a tethering device intended to secure parts of a building to each other and to a foundation for wind resistance. U.S. Pat. No. 5,687,512 to Spoozak et al. describes a hurricane lockdown system with a loop of a rafter cable secured around eaves of a roof and a number of anchor cables secured to the rafter cable and to the ground. U.S. Pat. No. 5,983,572 to Laboy discloses a system in which tie-down members are strapped across the roof of a building structure. U.S. Pat. No. 6,088,975 to Wiegel discloses a system for wind protection having ground anchors, tiedown cables and a storm shield secured to the cables. In U.S. Pat. No. 6,161,339 to Cornett, Sr. et al., a wire rope stretched over roofing members is attached to a number of tie-down devices above the top plate of a wall frame. Each tie-down apparatus extends from an anchor in the foundation to a point above the top plate. Some of these approaches are unlikely to meet the new wind resistance requirements, or are unwieldy and expensive.
The following references are also of interest. U.S. Pat. No. 6,389,761 B1 to McKinnon relates to an earthquake resistant support structure with a pair of cables extending diagonally between opposite corner members. U.S. Pat. No. 5,806,259 to Smith discloses a reinforcing apparatus including a cable which is secured under tension to anchor brackets mounted on opposite ends of a beam. U.S. Pat. No. 5,862,639 to Abou-Rached relates to a resistant pre-fabricated building panel for making a three-dimensional structure such as a house. In U.S. Pat. No. 3,601,944 to Shepherd, a building frame includes two laterally spaced supporting structures and laterally extending cable trusses anchored to the ground. U.S. Pat. No. 4,087,353 to Thesing describes a method for construction of buildings comprising connecting a cable templet means between the bottom and the top plate members and tensioning the cables to form rigid top and bottom plate boundaries. U.S. Pat. No. 4,472,916 to Krebs is directed to a house construction having a plurality of vertical profile posts. The horizontal cables penetrate the upper ends of the posts to brace each post. U.S. Pat. No. 4,442,989 to Hartmann teaches a cable bearing system consisting of I-shaped bearers arranged in the direction of a cable line. A modular building system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,906,075 to Sowers.
A cable tension regulator is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,327,021 to Cushman.